


The Offending Garment

by scioscribe



Category: Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Accidental Marriage Due to Unknowing Theft of Shapeshifter Skin, M/M, POV First Person, POV Jeeves, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-12 23:24:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Jeeves removes a most unsuitable sealskin coat from Bertie's wardrobe.





	The Offending Garment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).

For years, I had naturally thought myself familiar with the whole of Mr. Wooster’s wardrobe, just as a gardener was familiar with his plot. Proper cultivation demanded expertise; pruning, unerring judgment. I was, if I may so, widely considered to enjoy both.

It was therefore a considerable blow to discover, at this late stage, that Mr. Wooster had in his possession a sealskin coat.

It was a vast, shapeless garment of close-trimmed fur, a dingy silver liberally and irregularly marred with splotches of black. Mr. Wooster had, in some effort at secrecy, wedged it far into the deepest recesses of his wardrobe. I remembered my holiday last January with a certain quiver of fear. The weather then had been blustery and cold, and it was entirely possible the sealskin coat had, in my absence, been employed against the chill. Mr. Wooster could already have been seen, in public, dressed like a whaler.

For I could not shake the impression that the coat was no recent acquisition. I am familiar—too familiar, some might say—with Mr. Wooster’s scent, a particular combination of musk and Imperial Leather soap, and that distinctive fragrance lingered around the collar.

I would allow that, on a cold winter’s day, it must have seemed an appealing choice. Both the fur and the underside of the coat were exquisitely—perhaps even hypnotically—soft, and the coat held a peculiar kind of living warmth. Its form was unfashionable, but it was friendly to the touch. Indeed, I realized with a start that I had been standing before the wardrobe with the coat in my arms for far longer than anyone would have thought necessary.

This lapse into hedonism strengthened my resolution against the coat. However, I could not decide how to be rid of it.

In the past, I have arranged—with what Mr. Wooster has declared the cold-blooded caprice of a Mafia don—for accidents to befall offending garments. Things could be stained, shredded, or singed. They could be given to the needy. They might even, under certain circumstances, be inflicted upon one of Mr. Wooster’s enemies.

For no clear reason, however, the thought of harm being done to the coat induced a kind of horror, and the thought of Roderick Spode (perhaps) in its embrace caused even greater antipathy.

My professional pride could not allow the coat to continue its tenure in Mr. Wooster’s closet; my instincts, with unusual vigor, could not allow it to meet an unseemly fate.

As a compromise—and with a pang of shame, feeling the solution childish—I resorted to hiding it.

That evening, Mr. Wooster returned from his party with the high flush and spirits that generally indicated a rare and enjoyable lack of catastrophe.

Only to go stock-still the moment the door closed behind him.

He touched the tip of his tongue to his lips, a gesture I had always found regrettably entrancing. “Ah, Jeeves?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have done any late-night spring cleaning while I was out, would you?”

“Nothing extensive, sir.” I glanced around the room, confirming that I had not disturbed anything. “If something is out of order—”

“No, no,” Mr. Wooster said hastily. “I’m sure I’m mistaken.” Without another word, he disappeared into his bedroom; I stood, intending to follow to help him undress.

A fruitless quest, as he burst back into the sitting room mere seconds later.

“Jeeves,” he said in a tight voice, “where the dickens is my sealskin coat?”

Whatever magnetic pull I might have felt towards the coat, I found it difficult to believe that Mr. Wooster was in the habit of checking its health and well-being every night. I could only imagine that he was so proud of having kept it from me all these months that he’d begun some tradition of regularly gloating over it, as a miser over his gold.

I employed a light riposte. “Was that a _coat_, sir? I’m afraid that, spying it huddled in the back of your wardrobe, I mistook it for a Dalmatian that had been taken ill.”

Mr. Wooster often rose to the defense of indefensible articles of clothing, but I’d rarely seen him look so wounded by a criticism. “I say,” he said, in a rather circular bit of rhetoric. He stood staring at me. There was an odd expression on his face that I had never seen before, even during a lengthy service of varied and often unusual circumstances.

“Shall I assist you with changing into your pyjamas, sir?”

“You haven’t gotten rid of it, have you, Jeeves?”

“Of the coat, sir? I believe you could define it as simply—misplaced.”

Mr. Wooster seemed to almost melt with relief. “That’s a sprinkling of sugar on the medicine, at least.” He appeared to be trying to think through something and was, owing to the late hour, the ebullience of his dinner party, and certain natural limitations, finding it rather difficult. At last he said, very slowly, “So it’s gone, the old s. s. c., to a place where it might be safe to say that only you, Jeeves, could readily lay hands on it?”

“I suppose that would be an accurate assessment, sir.”

“Never mind that you thought it looked like a down-in-the-dumps Dalmatian, you squired it off and stashed the blasted thing.”

“That would seem yet another essentially accurate statement, sir. Somewhat more colorfully phrased.”

“And you wouldn’t say you felt any pressing need to give it the old heave-ho?”

“No, sir,” I said, with perhaps unwarranted vehemence.

Mr. Wooster nodded a few times. “Well,” he said nonsensically, “that’s that, then, isn’t it? To the victor go the spoils, even if the victor turns his nose up at them and calls them tosh.”

He did submit at that time to my helping him undress. As it had been an especially late evening, I had not—he’d been clear on this before his departure—been obliged to wait up for him, but I had to admit to myself that I would have waited much longer. The feel of the soft, lustrous fur of the coat against my hands had set into motion an inexplicable craving for further sensation. I wanted to touch him. It was an urge I had often had and often denied, but not that night.

_To the victor go the spoils._

Mr. Wooster’s bare torso was finely and elegantly sculpted. I looked with unprofessional interest at the tension in the muscles of his back as I held out his pyjama shirt.

There was a light dusting of freckles across his shoulders. I had noticed it before, sometimes even with this level of attention and interest.

However, the sense of a charge between us, of a kind of permission to touch those freckles, was quite new.

“Jeeves,” Mr. Wooster said, “did you really mean that about the Dalmatian?”

There had been a kernel of truth to the insult, but it couldn’t have been called a literal account of my thoughts on the matter, still less a complete one. And looking at him then, it occurred to me that the spots on the sealskin could be thought of as resembling freckles.

“No, sir.” I slid the shirt up his arms and over his shoulders.

He buttoned it, his back still turned towards me. “Not to say that I don’t know you don’t see many of them these days.”

It took me a moment to untangle all the negatives. “Yes, sir.”

“But certain people throughout history have been very fond of sealskin coats, Jeeves. It used to be that a chap could scarcely leave one lying on the beach before someone bounded off with it. You’d wriggle out to have a splash and then before you knew it you’d be setting up house with some silly ass whose only qualification for it all was being able to stuff a coat off in a hatbox somewhere. Not necessarily a hatbox, of course, though I imagine they figured prominently. Coats inappropriately placed in hatboxes probably struck these cauliflower-brained suitors as the height of wit. But you understand what I’m saying, Jeeves.”

“Not entirely, I fear, sir.”

He rotated and studied me for a moment. “That whole old story. The eternal verities of love and the sea. You can’t be telling me old Spinoza never got around to talking about it.”

“Perhaps not, sir.”

“Selkies,” Mr. Wooster said. “Their skins. What happens when a bloke makes off with one, _viz_., that the selkie is perforce, if ‘perforce’ is the word I mean, bonded to aforementioned bloke in soggy seaside matrimony.”

I had relieved Mr. Wooster of many unwanted engagements. I hadn’t considered that one of them might escape my notice long enough to become a marriage, let alone that said marriage—however legally dubious—might be to myself.

I fear I was at a most unromantic loss for words. In my own defense, I would point out that inadvertently marrying one’s employer by hiding his sealskin coat was not a situation habitually discussed even in the private chambers of the Junior Ganymede Club. I have heard hair-raising stories of blackmail, chiffon undergarments, forged wills, and seances involving the conjured spirit of the still-quite-living Tallulah Bankhead; selkies had never once been mentioned, even by our handful of Scottish members who might be expected to be familiar with such possibilities.

I marshaled all the resources of my professionalism. “I assure you, sir, I had no intention whatsoever of forcing you into any kind of compact. I was unaware that you were thus—afflicted. Naturally, I’ll return your coat to you at once.”

Mr. Wooster’s face fell minutely. “Right,” he said. “Of course you will. A total blunder, what?”

“Entirely, sir. Please excuse me.”

“Right. Only,” I heard him say as I was crossing the flat to reach my own room, “it does take the wind out of one’s sails.”

My hiding place for the coat was combined ease with effectiveness, and it was only the work of a moment to have it my hands once again.

I must admit, now that I knew the garment’s origins, I was reluctant to let it go. Holding it summoned back that feeling of warmth and familiarity, homey qualities too rarely combined with the sensual.

I did not want it to go back into a secret, neglected spot where I would be unable to touch it.

But it was highly unfair to Mr. Wooster to use his nature against him. I have sometimes manipulated Mr. Wooster, but it would be a singularly low and despicable act to force him into a wedded state he had always been most keen to avoid.

I did think, however—in the privacy of my own rooms—that I would make a more than suitable partner for him. I have always admired his cheerful disposition and been highly concerned with his happiness, and over the years, I have come to prize the goodness of his heart.

Nevertheless, one must, I had been told, play the _preux chevalier_.

With a heavy heart, I returned to Mr. Wooster’s bedroom, bearing the coat before me.

He had moved to sit on the bed. As I entered, he raised his head from where it had been resting against his hand.

“I see your point, Jeeves,” he said. “It does hit the eye with a certain force.” He held out his hand.

“I fear I misspoke, sir, not understanding the true purpose of the article. As a garment _qua _garment, it may be unsuitable. But outside of the bounds of fashion, it surpasses almost all else. I am—very fond of it.”

Mr. Wooster perked up. “Are you really?”

“Yes, sir.” I drew my hand across the coat, feeling the sleek fur smooth out. Mr. Wooster’s breath seemed to catch in his throat.

Had all this played out with two others, I would have seen the crux of the matter immediately. I have a blind spot, however, where I am most deeply concerned. The cost of error, one feels, is much greater when it may fall on oneself or on a loved one.

But I was beginning to feel that I was not in error at all.

“In particular, I find I admire the freckles,” I said.

“Spotty, I think you said, with distinct canine overtones.”

“I was endeavoring to be playful, sir.”

“You mean to say, then, that you really like it?”

I said, “With all my heart, sir.”

Mr. Wooster’s smile was as extravagant and wholehearted as his decency; it would not be wrong to say he evoked a sense of sunrise even in this midnight hour. “Well, dash it all, you could have said so before. You don’t take a selkie’s skin and then leave him convinced of your indifference and gasping for air, Jeeves. I mean to say, no one ever pops on a wedding band and then gets the cleaver out right there in the church. If you were a newt, which I for one am thankful you’re not, you wouldn’t vibrate your tail in a semi-circle and then renege.”

“I am sure not, sir. I only wished to avoid comparisons to men who place coats in hatboxes.”

“Jeeves,” Mr. Wooster said, quite plainly forgetting much of his own biography, “I am not the chump who stands idly by while he’s forced up the aisle. A Wooster may be chivalrous, but he is also forthright.”

He held out his hand again, and my heart seemed to go still in my chest.

He had not, now that I revisited our conversation, directly said that he would be pleased to have his coat remain in my keeping. People often misunderstand Mr. Wooster, whose conversation does not always achieve a crystalline clarity. I could have fallen victim to this myself. He may have only wanted the insult to the garment retracted.

I extended my arm, offering it out.

“Oh, not that,” Mr. Wooster said dismissively. “Yours, Jeeves, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“My coat, sir?”

“As a favor to the young master. Or young mister now, I suppose, if it suits you.”

The exchange, I concluded, was a gesture of sorts, as an exchange of rings was out of the question. I removed my jacket, wishing fruitlessly that it had been a lesser article, and presented it to Mr. Wooster.

He held it for a moment, draped across his arms, and then raised it, turning the lapel against his fingers and pressing a kiss to that exact spot.

The sight produced certain welcome effects. Indeed, by the end of the night, long after both coats had been thoroughly consigned to landing spots around the room, I had come to regard the sacrifice of a favored jacket as entirely and unquestionably worthwhile.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Offending Garment [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886620) by [gracicah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracicah/pseuds/gracicah)


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